Tombés Pour Daho

Jacques Duphly (1715-1789) was the last of the great French clavecinists, a student of D’Agincourt and a contemporary of Corrette, de Mondonville, Daquin, Dandrieu, Boismortier, and especially François Couperin and Rameau, whose music Du Phly’s high-Baroque / gallant style perhaps most closely resembles. Du Phly early gained an outstanding reputation, with Couperin and Balbastre, as an esteemed teacher. He was cited by Rousseau as “an excellent master of the harpsichord, especially in the perfection of ‘le doigte’ … consisting in general of a soft, light, and regular movement”. P.-L. Daquin, wrote in 1753 that “one discerns a great deal of ‘lightness in his touch,’ and ‘a certain languor,’ which, ‘sustained by ornamentation’ (graces), marvelously renders the characters of his pieces.”

The Cabo Verdean popular music genre of funaná is one that, up until a few years ago, had little representation in the wider global marketplace, and it’s easy to understand why. Outlawed by the Portuguese colonial government in the 1950s as too proud an expression of identity, it emerged into the local mainstream only in the 1990s, where it served as a sonic symbol of political activism during Cabo Verde’s shift to a multi-party government. In more recent years, popular sounds of the island nation have featured in several new releases – Analog Africa’s Space Echo and Legend of Funaná, Ostinato’s Synthesize the Soul – with funaná occasionally the focus.

Overall, the musicianship here is wonderful. The Claude Quartet plays with precision and feeling, and in lock step. Nuances (subtle dynamics, etc.) have been captured in fuller fidelity than in the original recording, making this an interesting listen. Of course, when you've heard one recording hundreds of time, the first time listening to a new one will seem a bit jarring at times, when the differences are at their greatest - but I'll not place any value on that - it's just different.

Lilya Zilberstein has already taken on some of the virtuoso pillars of the repertoire for DG—Brahms's Paganini Variations, the Mussorgsky Pictures, Rachmaninov's Third Concerto and so it is fascinating to hear her in music of a more subtle evocation and delicacy. And although her Debussy and Ravel are hardly consistent or to the manner born, they are rarely less than individual or distinguished. Like other Russian pianists before her she places greater emphasis on the music's sensuous and expressive warmth than on its formal clarity. Her response to say, ''Le soiree dans Grenade'' (from Estampes) is richly coloured and inflected (a reminder, perhaps, of Falla's awe of Debussy's Hispanicism) and in ''Jardins sous la pluie'' her virtuosity evokes a coldly drenched and windswept garden its flowers momentarily bejewelled by passing sunlight. She is also highly successful in the more objective patterning of Pour le piano, making the opening Prelude's fortissimo chording and shooting-star glissandos resonate with unusual power.

Toronto-based composer Linda Catlin Smith has been well represented in Another Timbre’s ten-volume release of contemporary Canadian composers, including the eight varied pieces of The Wanderer and the two-CD set, The Drifter. Here she shares a disc with that work of concentration-camp genius, Messiaen’s, Quatuor pour la fin du temps. They’re performed by the English ensemble Apartment House, and share the instrumentation of violin, cello, clarinet and piano.

Dieterich Buxtehude was a Danish-German organist and composer of the Baroque period. His organ works represent a central part of the standard organ repertoire and are frequently performed at recitals and in church services. He composed in a wide variety of vocal and instrumental idioms, and his style strongly influenced many composers, including Johann Sebastian Bach. Today, Buxtehude is considered one of the most important composers in Germany of the mid-Baroque.

Korean-born but a political exile in Germany for the last 25 years of his life, Isang Yun (1917-1995) managed to create a workable synthesis between western and eastern traditions, which fused a musical language based upon the total serialism of the post-war avant garde with elements drawn from both Korean and Chinese traditional styles. The three pieces here, all composed in the 1980s, show just how expressively effective that synthesis could be. In the First Chamber Symphony, it allows Yun to create a richly cushioned sound-world, full of shimmering textures, hazy microtones and supple, swooping gestures, while the rich string layering and urgent melodic writing of Tapis and the evocations of the sound of the Chinese harp in Gong-Hu, for solo harp and string orchestra, create music that is instantly attractive, even if the details of its inner workings are not always obvious.